Practicing mindfulness with an app may improve children’s mental health

Many studies have found that practicing mindfulness-defined as cultivating an open-minded attention to the present moment-has benefits for children. Children who receive mindfulness training at school have demonstrated improvements in attention and behavior, as well as greater mental health.

When the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, sending millions of students home from school, a group of MIT researchers wondered if remote, app-based mindfulness practices could offer similar benefits. In a study conducted during 2020 and 2021, they report that children who used a mindfulness app at home for 40 days showed improvements in several aspects of mental health, including reductions in stress and negative emotions such as loneliness and fear.

The findings suggest that remote, app-based mindfulness interventions, which could potentially reach a larger number of children than school-based approaches, could offer mental health benefits, the researchers say.

“There is growing and compelling scientific evidence that mindfulness can support mental well-being and promote mental health in diverse children and adults,” says John Gabrieli, the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, and the senior author of the study, which appears this week in the journal Mindfulness.

Reference: Treves, I.N., Olson, H.A., Ozernov-Palchik, O. et al. At-Home use of App-Based Mindfulness for Children: A Randomized Active-Controlled Trial. Mindfulness (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-023-02231-3.